21.064 a sleeping (or not) psychometric question

                Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 21, No. 64.
       Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
  www.kcl.ac.uk/schools/humanities/cch/research/publications/humanist.html
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         Date: Thu, 31 May 2007 06:25:53 +0100
         From: Joel Goldfield <joel_at_cs.fairfield.edu>
         Subject: a sleeping (or not) psychometric question

Dear Willard & Colleagues,
        I was just browsing through old e-mail when I discovered this
query by Willard. My curiosity was piqued since the elapsed time that
he refers to, "ca 1.5 seconds," is also the average amount of time in a
human being's audio memory buffer after which it decays without
"continuous rehearsal." This length of time is an important consideration
in language learning pedagogy and is an
interesting coincidence. (See Tripp & Roby, "Auditory Presentations
and Language
Laboratories," in _Handbook of Research for Educational Communications and
Technology_, New York: Simon & Schuster Macmillan, 1996, p. 821.)
        Regards,
        Joel Goldfield
        Fairfield University
==================
           Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2006 08:14:28 +0000
           From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty_at_kcl.ac.uk>

Dear colleagues,

Years ago I read a psychometric study of how people use computing
systems as a function of the time between a user-initiated action and
the system's response. The conclusion of the study was that if more
than ca 1.5 seconds elapsed, the delay would begin to affect what the
user then did. For example, this study suggested, if I put a query to
a system and more than the threshold delay occurs, then I will begin
to censor subsequent queries based on some assessment or other that I
make of the probability of a useful response. The conclusion seems
quite plausible. Consider, for example, unavoidable delays in
conversation between saying something and getting a response. Spontaneity goes.

My question is, can anyone here give me a reference to this or any
similar study?

Many thanks.

Yours,
WM

Dr Willard McCarty | Reader in Humanities Computing | Centre for
Computing in the Humanities | King's College London | Kay House, 7
Arundel Street | London WC2R 3DX | U.K. | +44 (0)20 7848-2784 fax:
-2980 || willard.mccarty_at_kcl.ac.uk www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/wlm/
Received on Thu May 31 2007 - 01:39:15 EDT